


Battle Haze

by orphan_account



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist
Genre: Flash Fic, Gen, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-03
Updated: 2019-02-03
Packaged: 2019-10-21 18:16:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 378
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17647496
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account





	Battle Haze

They’re sitting in a green canvas tent west of the Xeres border watching a red foreign sun rise over powder-soft dunes. In the spirit of things, Hughes makes Ishbali coffee, bitter and grainy with the body of a dark, beautiful woman and a scent that embraces like thick exotic arms. The process intoxicates Roy; the dense open flame licks at a time-crusted pan and infuses a heat that his throbbing head soaks in through his eyes. When the life drains out of him (the nights are long, he’s taken the lives of too many) his fingers turn to ice. He laces them together and stares at the flame, commands it to fill him, but the warmth doesn’t leave his throat, it just pools and congeals until he can hardly speak.

Roy takes milk in his tea and cream in his coffee and half a sugar cube in each, but Hughes hands him a steaming tin cup and says no, no as though he knows Roy is about to ask. He breaks a capsule of grey powder into the cup and makes a motion with his finger that means stir, makes a face that means just drink. He takes off his glasses and toasts Roy’s cup and knocks down the drink so fast that his adam’s apple is for a second apple-sized. Roy sips at his slowly, the heat of the drink in the tin of his cup burns his fingers but doesn’t penetrate the skin, doesn’t numb the cold in his hands or his wrists or his heart. Hughes bumps shoulders with him, says something that sounds like you’re too serious but he hears it don’t take it seriously. He thinks long and hard about it until the steam rising off his Ishbali coffee makes the blood vessels in his nose constrict painfully.

He feels a queer sensation spread out from his breastbone and he looks at Hughes, who smiles with an almost apologetic turn of shoulder. He lifts his cup to the red rising sun and says to the country, what he means is the one they destroyed. Hughes understands and toasts back, samples some of the silt at the bottom of his cup and grimaces from the taste, the distaste, it’s a battle he’ll never forget.


End file.
